I am still new to this, so bear with me. Yesterday was incredible, what a good weight loss day. I had lost another pound in a week, and was feeling great. For some reason today is HARD. I am keeping a food diary and now I am totaling my calories to see where I have been. I felt like today was a really bad day but I ate about 1680...give or take. Like I said, I'm still new to this. I see a dietician on next Tuesday but in the mean time I am getting really frustrated. How many calories should I aim for? I am about 65" (5'6") and work out good about 3-4 times a week and am not too active besides that. You all can see my weight to the left...what do I aim for? 1680 is still less than what I normally eat, and I am trying to eat right but I am finding "surprises" in my calories. I just need to know how many calories to consume safely for max. weight loss.

Hello there. Your basal metabolic rate is about 1600 so that's a safe number to stay around. You know you are going to burn that much, even if you laid around all day, so anything extra you do will put you in a deficit. You could go as low as 1200, but if you do, I would keep that to the days that you do not workout and eat at the upper level on your exercise days. Either way, 1600 is a safe number for you no matter what you do!!!

This is what I go by and it has really helped:

Womens Nutritional Health Guide

For keeping track of my cals I use this:

Fitday

Thanks so much for that link, Jasmine! I'm doing SBD upon my doctors recomondation, but I just started using Fitday to keep an eye on my calories too. I've been a bit confused as to how many calories, etc, I should be getting, and that really helped.

I'm having such a tough time using FitDay because I can't find the exact foods that I eat here in China! I try to overestimate my intake and underestimate my activities.

You are welcome. So glad I could help!!

Yes, thank you so much for the link. I almost crashed hard several times this week, thank god when Friday night came around to my "free dinner". I don't know why week 2 was so much harder. My weigh in day is every Tuesday, so we'll see if my counter goes down any then.

I would suggest about 1600 also. There is no magic number, it's basically trial and error. Try it out for a few weeks, see how it goes, and tweak it from there. Don't feel bad about a 1680 day. It takes 3500 calories more/less than you need to gain/lose a pound. You didn't do any damage
UWPiPhiAngel-
use the custom foods option. Alot of the foods I eat aren't on there, either. You can enter them in once by using the nutrition facts label to get calories/fat/carbs, etc on whatever you're eating, and fitday will save it to your list. Restaurant/takeout food is the only place we are truly screwed, lol. You just have to guess.